Independent participatory media for Iran

Iran’s foreign ministry commented on U.S.-Cuba relations saying: “The recent developments in the relations between the two countries are a step toward reducing tensions in the region, and their continuation could benefit the process of international developments.”

According to Mehr News Agency Marzieh Afkham, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said: “The imposition of sanctions and isolationist policies by aggressive powers against the will of nations and independent countries is ineffective and inefficient” and the U.S. has now admitted it.

U.S. President Barack Obama has been quoted as saying decades of severed relations with Cuba have not yielded the desired results for the U.S.

Cuba and the United States have agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations after half a century of severed relations, and the White House has announced that it will open an embassy in Havana.

Iran, too, has no diplomatic relations with the U.S. They were severed during the 1979 Revolution in Iran, and there was no sign of rapprochement until the election victory of Iranian President Hassan Rohani. When Obama contacted Rohani during the Iranian president’s visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, it was the first time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic that the presidents of the two countries spoke directly on the phone.

In recent months, the Iranian foreign ministry has also held some direct talks with U.S. counterparts in the course of the nuclear negotiations.